There Is Always Some Kind of Way Out of Here
by The Archaon
Summary: Aiden Pearce has never been a man to give up, and when he finds himself surround by Blume troopers, he does his best to give them one last black eye. This sets off a series of events, landing Aiden in a new world. Some things, however, never change, and now the Illusive Man has sent Shepard to 'deal' with a little problem, a little problem know as 'The Fox.'
1. Chapter 1

Prologue: Into The Circuits, I Rush & I Run

"_They think I'm a man out of control, but I've never had so much control."_

_-Aiden Pearce, The Vigilante_

I'll admit, I'm a curious man. What does this mean? Well, when I had the chance to take a look at some of Blume's new hardware, I took it. That's what that means.

T-Bone had given me some info, talking about this project Blume was thinking about before he dropped off the grid, apparently they had finished it. There weren't any files talking about what it was, and there was nothing I could get from ctOS either.

Which, of course, left one option; get into Blume, and find out what this thing was up close and personal. Not the best plan, I admit. I do prefer behind the scenes work, so much simpler, and less getting shot at. Of course, we don't always get what we want. Especially not me.

Clara, she tried to convince me not to go, said I had more important things to do, getting Damien to give Nicky back. She was right, sure, but Blume was one of the major things in the city making my life hard, which of course, meant it was harder to get Nicky back. So, get in, find out about their nifty new toys, and maybe take it for myself, simple plan.

Except, where Blume is involved, nothing is simple. Their overindulgence in high tech security made my job a bit easier, sure. Let me plan routes, all that fun stuff, but it also made their guards tougher to get around. Heavier armor, bigger guns, you see.

Didn't mean all of them were smart, though. I got pretty far in either by sneaking behind some guys, or giving them some good whacks on the back of the head with my telescopic baton. Fun stuff, seeing a guy in pounds of body armor drop cold to this little metal stick.

But I digress, like I said, I was pretty far into one of Blume's dev labs for their fancy stuff. Too far in to get back out easily, that much was for sure. Which left only one option, keep going. I'd hacked a few PCs, some PDAs, stuff like that. Gotten a bit of info on this so called 'Project Widow' odd name, I know.

From what I could gather, Blume was sticking together random new tech they'de found, basically throwing stuff at a wall, and hoping it stuck. The plan was to make a teleporter of some kind, revolutionize fast response for crimes, things like that.

But, like I said, they didn't have any real clue what they were doing right now. That being said, they had apparently gotten it 'operational,' whatever that entails, and were gonna try sending someone to a secure lab some two miles away from this one, short range tests due to safety protocol.

Well, needless to say, I wasn't really a supporter for Blume, and most certainly didn't want them taking over more of Chicago. Which meant I had to stop this project in it's tracks. Easy enough, right? Smash the thing, get out. But no, can't ever be like that.

Blume being themselves, they'd spread out all the data for the project across about eight isolated PCs around the facility, only the project leads would have access to any one of them. Good plan, I'll give credit where it's due.

Didn't mean I liked it though; not only did I have to find these computers, I then had to hack through them, find the data, wipe it, not alert anyway and _then _find my way to the actual device, sabotage it, and wipe all the testing and operational data.

Times like these I really wish I had some kinda special forces working for me.

"... this will bring about a new age of public safety, with Blume being able to safely, and quickly, dispatch enforcers to any location in the city, crime will be at an alltime low!" This declaration was followed by cheers and applause. Heh, look at Blume, already making a sales pitch before they even got their toy running.

It had taken forever, but I finally reached the final PC, locked inside a secure room, of course. I went through the usual song and dance to unlock secured doors, parsing through code and whatnot, looking for exploits and backdoors, took about thirty seconds before I heard a soft click and pushed open the door.

There we go, final one. A damn nice looking desktop hooked in to all sorts of fancy regulators, they didn't want a blackout or any kind of heat to fuck it up, sat right there on a table infront of me. Things were never easy though. Trying to get into the thing resulted in a password lock screen. From there, I went on to crack it open like an egg.

Higher grade encryption and defense protocols and securities compared to most of the stuff around here, but with plenty of time to work and a quick mind I got in after four minutes work sifting through data.

Next came finding the actual files and getting rid of them, as well as adding a copy to my personal collection. Is that someone's airsoft rifle conversion tutorial? Why was this even here? Whatever, deleted. Next up, lots of celebrity porn, well then. Also deleted. Ah, looks like someone thought this was a good place to put their bank info, stupid bastard. Saved and deleted.

Finally after sifting through even more junk I found what I was looking for, a file named 'Widow_Project' also encrypted yet again. Not bothering to decrypt it now I just made a copy, saved it to my phone, and deleted the original. After that, pretty much nothing was left on the computer, after I erased all evidence of my being anything, nothing remained.

Now to make my way over to where they decided to keep the prototype teleporter, thankfully, I had a handy-dandy little map I downloaded off one of their servers to guide me. Took about thirty minutes, most of that time was spent sneaking around annoying guard patrols.

Now, getting into that room might be a bit… troublesome. You see, not only was there this big secure door, there were also four heavily armed and armoured guards standing out front. And obviously, I couldn't unlock the door 'till they were dealt with.

Usually I would chuck a noisemaker down a hall, wait for some mook to go after it, and knock him out cold. That's the bad thing about trained soldiers, when their friends start disappearing, they notice. Which meant we had to do things the hard way.

First step, find a way to take them all out quietly. Good news, there were plenty of server boxes and their armor wasn't so good for electricity, that would take out one. Next step was to jam the comms, don't want them calling in help, introduce two other's to Mr. Shotty. Finally, shove a grenade in the last guy's face, push him away, and get behind something.

Of course, it didn't go as planned. Their comms had gotten an update, I couldn't scramble them; so while I had gotten rid of the obstacles in my path, the entire armed force of the lab was now gunning for me, and I didn't have a clean way out anymore.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go, not at all. I was supposed to save Nicky, get Jacks his mom back, shut down Blume, maybe. Make Lena's killers pay. But now? Now I was stuck up against an experimental teleporter, desperately hacking away at the console to wipe all the data off it.

I had just finished when Blume agents started coming down the halls. I had sent Nicky a message telling her to remember me by the time they were reaching the door. And I was bashing the teleporter in with my baton by the time they stormed in the room and aimed their guns at me.

After that? I don't remember much after that. Searing pain, a bullet wound, and a damn bright flash of electricity. Then, then I must've been beaten in the head, because my world went black.


	2. Chapter 2

Prologue 2: You Can't Catch A Digital Shadow

"_How is it when I ask for someones help they never say sure, no problem. No strings attached."_

_-Commander Shepard_

Commander Alexia Shepard was not having the best of times. Indeed, it wasn't only the day, rather the entire week. First she had been brought back from the dead, that was kinda alright, living was good. Then they told her two years had gone by, she had been declared dead, and most of the original crew of the Normandy had died. After that, she was introduced to the Illusive Man, the leader of a shadowy pro-Human organization called 'Cerberus,' and the man who brought her back to life. Now she was being forced to work with them, because these aliens known as 'Collectors' were abducting Human colonies, and it was thought they had ties to the Reapers.

And now? Now she was headed off to crime hub, Omega, along with her two Cerberus comrades, Miranda Lawson, and Jacob Taylor. She honestly didn't mind her company, she didn't really like Cerberus, but they were okay people. Where she was going, on the other hand, she didn't like at all.

Omega was almost exactly the polar opposite of the Citadel. It was a dirty, poorly lit, crime ridden rock floating in space, home to slavers, pirates, mercs, and all other kind of undesirables. And presiding over it all? Queen Bitch, Aria T'loak.

The reason why? Because, the Illusive Man had decided she needed a bit more help, and while Shepard wasn't adverse to the idea, she would have liked to pick her help on her own. Instead she was being sent to pick up two possible squad mates; A Doctor Mordin Solus, and some vigilante called 'Archangel.'

Picking up Mordin hadn't been all too hard, not for an Infiltrator like her to sneak around and backstab all the mercs in the squad's way. Convincing him to come along had been harder, but Shepard was no stranger to doing random things for people to get stuff for herself.

So, after fighting her way through the underbelly of Omega for about two hours the Commander was having a nice chat with Miranda whilst reclining in a comfy chair. At least, she was, until Miranda got a message forwarded from the Kelly, a message telling Shepard that there was a new goal on Omega. Oh joy.

With a quickly said goodbye Shepard rose from her seat, walking out the door and onto the elevator that would, slowly, take her to the captain's quarters, and her own private terminal. Shepard would readily admit she didn't like being commanded around like an attack dog by this Illusive Man, but considering she had no real funding or support on her own, it was either work with Cerberus, or be dead.

Shepard didn't really like being dead. And that's why she was constantly on the beck and call of Cerberus' mysterious overlord, being told to go places and do things, not unlike all the times Admiral Hackett had interrupted her mission to stop Saren with strange and trivial requests to go down to random planets and fix stuff.

Honestly, when she became a Spectre, this was not what she had imagined. Setting aside her dislike for her current predicament, Shepard sat down in the comfy leather chair that was in front of the cabin desk. Going through a rather complex login system, after which she brought up the standard galactic messenger, which contained a new message sent by an 'Unknown' user. The Illusive Man didn't like to be tracked, even between his own organization.

Inside the message was a short little statement, and a dossier. Basically, TIMmy wanted her to find, and 'dispose' of this guy called 'The Fox,' apparently a very tech savvy man whom had gained the Illusive Man's ire via hacking into his network, which was something Shepard found commendable, and stealing virtual tons of black info that Cerberus held onto.

Stuff like secrets, blackmail, stuff linking TIMmy to Cerberus, and files on all of their experiments of which not all were completely legal. Obviously, this was something that needed to be taken care of before all of Cerberus was exposed, and their mission was compromised.

"Well fuck… this could be a bit more complicated than I had thought," Shepard muttered, she had moved over to reading the man's dossier, a file containing all the info Cerberus had on him. The most surprising thing wasn't his skills, no, it was the sheer lack of data on him that was contained in the file. She only got a vague description, a tall human male usually wearing a long black coat and old style 'baseball-hat,' sometimes seen with a scarf.

Other than that, there was a tid bit about some of the skills he had, which included mastery of hand-to-hand combat, fairly admirable mobility, and amazing tech prowess. No specifics at all, and Shepard did _not_ like going into a mission without specifics.

But, that was all she got, and it was all she was going to get. With a sigh and a shake of the head, Shepard rose from her luxurious chair, leaning against a wall as she thought. At current her squad consisted of three people, not counting herself. Not nearly enough to block all the possible exits a man like this 'Fox' might have.

It was then Shepard remembered the other mission she had on Omega, to recruit a vigilante called 'Archangel.' He was a sniper like herself, a tactical genius, and a tech expert if the file was anything to go by. Surely he would be helpful in containing, cornering, and eliminating this 'Fox' that she was to catch.

With that goal in mind, Shepard told her squad to suit up, and they begun their trip through the dirt of Omega.

Wow. Just _wow._ That was all Shepard could think. Not only was Archangel an amazing soldier, he was, in fact, her old squadmate Garrus. Perhaps her closest and best friend during her hunt for Saren. Their reunion was cut short, however, due to the heavy fighting against the three different merc gangs present on Omega.

Garrus had managed to piss off not just one, but all of the major Mercs in the area. The Blue Suns, the Eclipse, and even the damn Blood Pack. Combine all three of those trigger-happy maniacs together? And you got a fucking disaster.

They had done pretty well, all things considered. They had fought for hours, and hours, holding off wave and wave of troops. Eventually everyone was dead except for the leader of the Blue Suns, Tarak. Damn bastard had taken a gunship and got Garrus in the face with a rocket.

The Turian would live, the Salarian did not. Still, it was pretty touch and go for a bit there, and Shepard certainly didn't regret putting a bullet in that damn merc's head. Thankfully, after all was said and done, Garrus was on the team and only a little worse for wear, something he waved off by saying that 'chicks dig scars.'

Shepard was happy to have Garrus back, she desperately needed someone with a sense of humor on this ship.

It was time to hunt down the Fox, and to get rid of him. Garrus had helped Shepard set up the trap they would catch him in, with Miranda, Jacob, Mordin, Garrus, and Shepard all blocking his escapes, and disabling anything he could throw at them, it was almost a guaranteed victory.

It took almost four hours to track him down, the guy was damn good at erasing his tracks, but eventually they caught him with an odd comm tap. He was listening in on Blue Suns communications for some reason, and that was what let Shepard trace him.

He found out quick of course, and then the chase was on. Shepard had to give the guy credit, not only was he mobile, he was also a fast thinker. He used his physical and technological prowess to get above them, below them, past them or behind them, and also to bring up annoying stuff in their way. Electric barriers, blowing fuses, water pipes, all kinds of annoyances that only served to slow her and her squad down.

The man may have lived on Omega for a long time, as was evident with how he moved, but even he couldn't account for all the twists, turns and alleyways. Thankfully, Garrus knew the layout like the back of his talon, and had made a complex plan to funnel this Fox right where they wanted him, without said Fox being able to tell.

He had run through the alleys, through vents, over rooftops, edging around ledges, slowing down her squads progress all the way, until he reached a dead end. He set up barriers and stun turrets while he tried to find a way out.

But it wasn't enough. He was cornered, and try as he might, there was no way to win a 1v5, especially not after his barriers went down, and the turrets shut off.

"So, you caught me," the man said, his voice deep and gravelly, a hint of mirth in it even as he stood in front of five armed soldiers, "what's your next move, Commander?" She was a bit surprised he knew who she was, but that passed quickly as she fixed her grip on her pistol.

"As much as I hate to do this, I've got orders to 'dispose' of you, the Illusive Man doesn't like loose ends," Shepard replied, it wasn't in her nature to kill an unarmed man, but if she wanted Cerberus' help, and for the Illusive Man to not betray her, she would go against her morals, but only so far.

"Ah, so Cerberus is hiring dead legends then, maybe I should sign up," The Fox said, she was almost certain he was smiling under that scarf he used to cover his mouth, and what an odd thing it was, with the strange broken 'N' across it, or was it a sideways 'Z'?

"Well, less hiring and more forcing, but I do what I have to do accomplish my mission. Now look, we don't have to make this painful, just stand still and this can all end soon," Shepard said, visibly saddened by what she had to do, but what other options did she have? It was then that she noticed the man looking at Garrus.

"Ahh, Garrus, working for pro-human black organizations now? And after all I've told you about them," he said, a disapproving tone in his voice as he pulled down his scarf, revealing a chiseled, and stubbled covered jaw and a mocking smile.

Suddenly, Garrus recognized him, and lowered his gun. Shepard tried to motion for him to be ready, but he stepped towards the man. "Aiden, funny seeing you here, huh? Never thought it'd end this way for us, really hoped it wouldn't, and I never repaid my debt," Garrus stepped towards this 'Aiden' then, and whispered quietly with the man, both of them keeping their movements quick and small, too quiet and too brief for Shepard to understand, and then they stopped, "but, you know how I am, Shepard here is my Commander, and her orders are mine to carry out. See you on the flip side, you crazy bastard," Garrus said, stepping back and raising his rifle, the Fox replied with a smile.

And then everything went black. All the lights around them flickered and died, all her suit and omni-tool functions were similarly dead, she was deaf and blind in a dark alley with someone the Illusive Man thought was dangerous.

But instead of meeting her end via knife to the throat, Shepard heard the pounding of boots on the ground, running off into the darkness, and when the lights came back? When the lights came back, Garrus was on the ground cold and the Fox was gone.

For the first time in a very long while, Shepard had failed a mission


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 1: Hack Into The Patchwork, Pierce The Plan

"_I needed to be able to end a fight before it even began. I wasn't there then, I am now."_

_-Aiden Pearce, The Fox_

Well, always good to see that I've still got it. Would have prefered if I didn't have to see whilst running for my life from a dead woman, but hey, trial by fire and all that. It was good to see Garrus again, although I would've prefered it to be on better terms. Although, if not for him, I'd probably by lying in one of Omega's gutters, body stripped and desecrated, so maybe I should send a few thousand credits his way.

I guess I should explain a bit about my life for the past two years if I'm gonna start recording this log now. It all started when I bashed up that teleporter prototype Blume was working on, what I thought had been a rifle butt to the head was actually the trauma of having every bit of me broken down, accelerated twenty eight point six times the speed of light, and reassembled in another universe.

A lot to take in, I know. As luck would have it, I ended up in this shit-hole called Omega, place is teeming with crime and sin, oh and did I mention the aliens? Yeah, that was probably the biggest thing to wrap my head around, fuckin' aliens. But hey, in two years, you learn to accept stuff.

As it was, I had gone back to my old job using my profiler to hack into stuff and steal information. I had never 'upgraded' to an omni tool because, frankly, the interface gave me a headache and it was far too noticeable. It's a giant glowing orange gauntlet for fuck's sake.

But anyway, back to stealing info. I went around looking for any bits and pieces of anything really that could point to a way back home, experimental projects, already existing designs, nothing was safe from my grasp. This Extranet thing helped with that a lot, seeing as how you could get info on practically anything from it, if you know how to get around some security measures.

Honestly, when I first got here I was a bit… disappointed in their cyber-security. One man with no knowledge of any new systems, with only a DedSec modded smartphone could breach into Omega's core computers. From there, from there I found out everything.

Every dirty little secret that anyone on Omega, and even off Omega, might have had. That's when I found out about Cerberus. This big 'Pro-human' black organization. They did fucked up shit, let me tell you. Human experimentation, on children no less. Torture, illegal research. Hell, they sent squads of soldiers to die at the teeth of some giant worm with a fake distress beacon because they wanted to 'See how they would react.'

Needless to say they were soon at the top of my shit-list. So, I remotely hacked into their network via Omega's uplinks, rather lucky I found an outpost in range I guess, and started gathering secrets. Big secrets.

Now, I wasn't the blackmail type, so you know what I was gonna do? I was gonna steal everything they had, data, resources, cash, take it all and then give what was left to the council. Not just them, of course, I knew as well as anyone that the council didn't get shit done. But, they had to get a copy. So would Aria. So would every other important person in the world, from private organizations to news reporters.

What they did with it was their own choice, but by giving it out to all those people, I ensured it couldn't be deleted, it was a solid plan.

But now? Now that Humanity's 'Greatest hero' is back? Well, now I'm thinking we might not need a personal civil war. And you know why? Because now I was getting info about Human colonies vanishing. Poof, gone. And that rubbed me the wrong way.

I did some digging after my big escape, looked into Cerberus info. Something was important enough to bring Shepard back to life for, and I was gonna find out what that was. What I found, I wasn't happy with after finding.

This alien race nobody knew fuck all about, the Collectors, they were abducting Humans. For what, nobody knew, but it couldn't be anything good. That was way the Illusive Man had sent Shepard out, once more, into the galaxy. To gain a squad that could take down this new threat.

Perhaps I had done enough in my time here. I'd stopped lots of crime, along with Garrus. I'd stolen so many secrets, I could put away some of the biggest bads in the galaxy. But with a threat like the collectors looming in the distance? Well, now was no time to stop.

But the first step would be getting off this rock.

Aria didn't like me. That was a fact. And she liked it even less when I tried to leave. You might ask, why did she wanna keep me here? Well, because, if she kept me here than whenever I spilled the beans about her, she knew where I would be to crush my head in.

Of course, that kinda got in the way of my plans. Which was why I was currently running through the pathways of Omega firing my custom made handgun back at some quickly approaching Batarian and Turian thugs.

But let me talk about my gun first, alright? So, as I'm sure you know, most conventional guns work by shaving off a bit of metal from a block of it, and propelling it at high speeds into a target. This builds up heat, of course, which is why you have these thermal clip things that give you a preset number of shots.

But you know what I thought? I thought that if we already have limited ammo, might be a better idea to have something bigger than a BB. Which is where my gun comes in, and no, it isn't named. I designed it, along with some help from Garrus, off of my old 1911 and a newer, but still outdated, Zenith pistol.

Put them together and I had this relatively light, moderately sized, badass looking gun. With a magazine size of fourteen, and chambered for the powerful 45.-70 rifle round, I could punch through pretty much anything that got in my way. And before you ask, yes, that does include shields and biotic barriers.

Also before you ask, no, I don't know how.

But anyway, back to the chase. I had these four guys on me, three turians, one batarian, all firing Predator Mk1s at me while running. Now, let me tell you, being accurate while running isn't really a thing. But I guess that makes me a hypocrite since I was doing it too, having shot six bullets at them to try and slow them down, along with bringing up shield barriers and popping electric boxes.

Sadly, these guys had better armor for electricity than Blume ever did, and all that really happened was them getting stunned for a bit. But hey, in a chase, every little bit of ground you can gain helps. Speaking of gaining ground, up ahead were some conveniently placed boxes I could use to jump up to another level, chuck a grenade behind me after I got up, and the thugs chasing me would be stuck below. Hack into a partition's servos and make it block the way and lock was just a bit of insurance.

Speaking of all the hacking I've been doing, maybe I should explain that too. You see, back in Chicago I had gotten this set of viruses, worms, halts, and general hacks from a shadowy Black Hat group called DedSec, but of course, none of those worked in this new universe I found myself in.

So, what I had to do was build everything back from the ground up, I used the DedSec hacks along with some stuff from my phone proper as bases, and what little good stuff I could grab off some omni-tools to restore all my old 'powers.'

And of course I added a few new things to deal with pesky shields, and biotics, and guns. Yeah, I can break guns now. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Obviously the next step to all this was to up the 'power' of all my little hacks, and that took a bit longer to do.

But, thankfully, with all the 'new-age' tech just lying around in Omega, there was plenty I could do. Garrus told me later that I'd essentially made something of Mark 8 quality by stuffing lots of Mark 2 & 3 stuff into a phone. I'm pretty happy with that, honestly.

Anyway, at the end of all that I had about as much control over the city as I did Chicago, save for security cameras of which there seemed to be none, as well as getting a few new toys, and having the lot of them be better than before.

As more bullets pinged against a shield barrier I also remember that I've still not gotten, nor jerry rigged, a shield generator. I should really get on that. Ignoring the bullets that were bouncing off the electric barrier, a dove through some random maintenance hatchway and was soon lost to those chasing me.

It occurs to me as I sit here in my new base, which looks surprisingly like The Bunker, that perhaps I should pack up and leave, considering Garrus knew where this was, and he'd probably tell Shepard. Well, the plan was to leave anyway, no sense in delaying that by trying to find a new safehouse.

"Well, no time like the present," I muttered, spinning about in my chair to face one of my many monitors, this one had a list of every single coming and leaving spacecraft, the ones I could potentially take/buy my way onto were outlined in red.

Oh, now there's a nice one, I thought, taking a closer look at the current ship I was viewing. Had been abandoned for some years, nobody could get it, pretty good tech, but unassuming, and big enough to fit my set-up, and then some.

Perfect, far too perfect.

Which meant one of two things, I was really lucky, or Aria had taken another approach to capturing me. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the latter. Lucky for me, I don't think Aria quite knows the extent of my control over 'her' city.

It was time to give the Queen of Omega a little show.

The plan was simple, falsify some loading documents for one of the other ships I could have taken, hack into it's networks and systems, and then start the lift-off sequence remotely. This would draw Aria and her thugs off the ship that she had been so generous to provide, which I could then lockdown and load, and get away on.

And before you say anything about it taking forever to load all the crap I had; due to the wonderful power of Mass Effect Technology, I could basically drag all of it along with me, and what I couldn't, I could hire some people needing to make a quick buck.

With a smile on my lips, a fake pre-recorded farewell message sent to Aria, and quite a few taps on both my phone and keyboard, and boom, the plan was underway.

All of the technical work taken care of, I moved over to my armory, which I had amassed over the years, and begun grabbing whatever I'd like to have on my person.

My pistol was a must, obviously, along with it came my original silenced 1911. Along with those came an assault rifle I had gotten some time back, biometrically locked to myself, and myself only, modded with some new tech to punch through shields, barriers, blah blah blah, you get it by now I'm sure. After that came a few homemade grenades, some sticky bombs, and noise-makers. Surprisingly all still effective in their base form, for some reason current gen armor wasn't really explosion resistant, and even with radar most soldiers couldn't help but check out the 'old-timey' music coming from down a hall.

All of my gear grabbed I went through the process of downloading all the information in my network onto my person, a risky move but a necessary one, and then formatted all the old drives at my base. You know, the ones that weren't stored away in this 'new ship' of mine.

Everything finished I walked to my door, and turned off the lights of the complex for the last time.

Everything went as planned, surprisingly. Honestly, I'm not in the practice of underestimating my enemies, but perhaps I gave Aria a bit too much credit. Anyway, after all the checks needed to make sure there were no trackers, or bugs, or anything to sabotage the ship, I started the, probably illegally paid for, ship.

Honestly, Aria did know how to buy a trap ship, this thing had leather seat. Leather seats! I cannot express how major a thing that is, considering even luxury gunships (Yes, those are a thing) only had a metal frame and some shitty cushion for a chair.

As I relaxed in my new chair I opened up the ship's UI, quickly grimacing at the haptic interface and going through the process of emulating the controls via laptop, I began inputting all the necessary commands that would take this ship to the Citadel, which was of course the first step on my new plan.

The second step was siphoning tons of cash from multiple accounts held by crime bosses and important figures so as to afford a rather nice place to live on the Citadel Presidium. And then a bit more cash to make sure those transactions and my future lodgings wouldn't be on any kind of grid.

It's good to have one of the premiere information dealers in the galaxy owe you a favour, it really is.

_/|

**Author's Notes: So, I've been forgetting these for the past two prologues, and perhaps my first true chapter is the proper place to put them. Anyway, as is fairly evident, this is a Mass Effect and Watch_Dogs crossover, and the first of it's kind that I've ever written.**

**While that might not fill some of you with confidence, and I understand why, I would like to reassure everyone that I will be doing my very best to write Aiden as befits him, and to make his adventures both interesting and logical.**

**Well, logical for Mass Effect mixed with Watch_Dogs, anyway. If any of you out there have suggestions for future adventures, ways to improve on characterization, little tidbits of information I might find interesting, or any kinds of requests; feel free to write a comment (Or a 'review' as Fanfiction likes to call them) and I'll do my best to make your dreams reality.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 2: Digital Jungle, City of Wind

"_In this city, no one can hide from me. No one. I wasn't always this guy, they crossed a line, and for that? I will make them pay. I'll turn their city against them."_

_Aiden Pearce, The Fox_

You know what they never tell you when you get on any kind of ship for a space-flight? How long it takes. Seriously. I mean, I guess it didn't take as long as it would to just drive there, which is physically impossible I know, but still, six hours feels like forever. I mean, it's justified in that you basically fly the total surface area of Earth twice when you travel from the Widow relay to the Citadel, but it still feels like forever.

Speaking of, the Citadel, nice place. Sure, I'd been there a few times before for business, and I was stunned and all the first time, but the charm really seems to disappear as you visit again. Or maybe that was just me, considering all the people with smiles plastered on their faces, so excited to visit the Citadel.

But yeah, I guess I can see it. I mean, I did see it before. The four arms that served as the 'surface' of the Citadel looked rather beautiful on approach, kinda like The Arc from Halo 3. Oh wait, nobody in this universe has probably ever heard of that franchise… oh well.

As I approached I got the usual call from C-Sec, or 'Citadel Security' for long. Landing clearances and all that, thankfully I had plenty of time to set up an identity, alibi, reason for being there, etc. All the stuff that they would be interested in.

Oh yeah, I was a baker now, so that's pretty neat.

What? I needed some kind of cover that was about as far from the truth as I could get, and it sounded like the most reasonable of things I could pick from. Since, you know, I had to choose from a pool of people who were to be expected at the Citadel in my timeframe.

Docking on a level near the Presidium, which was of course where I would be staying, I rose from my seat and walked out to the air-lock. Waiting through the lengthy pressurization/decontamination procedures one must always go through upon landing.

Let me tell you, I really love the Citadel. Not for any of the stuff you can do here, for the people, for any of the things you can see or buy, no. I love it for a completely other reason that requires a short explanation.

As I'm sure you can understand, my choice of attire isn't exactly common anymore, what with alien fashion and all that. So, the solution to this was to make a cloak of some kind, however, that had its own disadvantages, such as lighting up like a Christmas tree under EM monitors, as well as taking a lot of power to maintain the light-bending field.

So, I can up with a solution of my own. You see, practically everywhere in this galaxy has some kind of holographic projectors in use, from street signs to newscasts. Using my amazing ingenuity, I tapped into these and used them to project a seamless disguise over myself. Either some random guy, or an appearance fitting the identity I was currently using.

The downside, of course, was that increasing both the distance and complexity of the projection would do one of two things; either short circuit the controls, making the whole thing just fall apparent, or it would burn out the projector, which did basically the same thing.

It was why I didn't use this new feature of my hacking skills that much, there weren't enough hologram projectors in a close enough area for it to be effective, the Citadel solved that problem.

So yeah, that's why I love it here, I can walk around and do whatever I like and nobody would be able to point me out in a lineup, plus, there was no telltale give-away, like a shimmer in the air or big glowing outline over EM.

Speaking of doing stuff, I was feeling hungry and just remembered that I hadn't eaten in two days, considering all the things that had been going on. So, I decided to find one of the nicer Italian restaurants on the Presidium, because we humans have good food, and I could afford it due to my constant thieving.

I could also instantly get myself a reservation for said Italian restaurant, yet another perk of being a hacker in the future.

Ah, a good dinner.. or was it lunch… whatever, a good meal is the perfect way to start one's foray into a new 'world' as it were. Considering this was my first time I would be staying on the Citadel for a long period of time.

Next step was to check on my new home and see if all my shit had been delivered. A risky move, if you were a failure like I wasn't. Also, it's actually less suspicious if you hire people to move your shit, you know, act like a normal person who just moved to the Presidium.

So, I was casually walking across whatever you call the Presidium's main yard, following a map projected onto my eyes by the same projectors that created my 'disguise' very useful, let me tell ya.

On another note, this place was fucking big. Like, seriously big, I was glad to have this map or else I probably would have gotten lost due to the sheer size of the place. Nonetheless, I eventually made my way to the elevator that led to the upper class living places.

I never should have gotten in that elevator. I kid you fucking not, it took thirty minutes to get to my floor, _thirty minutes_ for the most technologically advanced elevator to move up four floors! And you know, I could've hacked it to go faster, but there was a C-Sec guard riding with me, so I couldn't do fuck all.

At least the guy understood my burdened sigh as I got out of the lift, replying with a sympathetic nod and a sigh of his own as he waited for the doors to close. On another note, my 'floor' was a rather nice place, I was currently looking at a small park which seemed to be the centerpiece of the space.

I knew I had chosen the right housing when I saw the pictures of the level and the house, speaking of the house, I set off for it. Getting there required climbing quite a few stairs, maybe this wasn't the best of decisions.

As I pushed open the door to my new home, after entering a rather lengthy start-up code, I was rather happy to find that my new home would not be some concrete-walled box, like the Bunker and my Omega set-up were.

No, instead as I walked through the door I was greeted by a short, quaint hallway that led out into a large open-concept room with light hard wood flooring, a wonderful deep blue carpet, cream colored walls, and a floor to ceiling window overlooking the Presidium's park. The room was also furnished was a rather large vid screen, set into the wall, and some plush couches and chairs strewn about, the one facing the screen had what looked to be a mahogany coffee table in front of it, too.

To say I was just happy would have been an understatement. No, I wasn't happy, I was ecstatic. This place was the nicest that I had, or probably ever would, live in. Sad thing was, good things don't last, and as soon as I finished what I came here to do, or Cerberus came knocking, I would have to leave.

Pushing aside those dreary thoughts I moved past the living room through a wider little hall which opened up to the kitchen, and had a staircase in it's side. The kitchen was what you'd expect, a nice, moderately sized, clean area with all the fancy amenities that some big wig on the Citadel would want.

Turning off before I reached it, I instead traveled up the stairs, of which there were an average amount, at least I think it was an average amount, I didn't count or anything.

Reaching the top revealed yet another hallway, this one had two doors along it's length, presumably a closet and a bathroom, before making a turn to the right, walking down it I stepped around the corner and saw that at the end was an office, with quite a few of my boxes piled in it, on the left wall was the bathroom for the second story, and on the right was my master bedroom.

As you might have guessed, I went straight for the office and begun unpacking all my stuff.

Three hours later and my setup was completely unpacked and running, it might seem like a long time, but considering all the stuff I had three hours was actually pretty good.

Anyway, I was already working on collection what information I could, dirty little secrets, passwords to stuff, bank codes, all the kinds of stuff that could keep me afloat as well as give me an 'in' to any databases that Cerberus might have their stuff in, lucky for me they weren't as impenetrable as they thought.

That being said, I still hadn't gotten anything off them yet, but hey, things like this take time and I did only just get here, I'd say the few million credits I'd accumulated was a good start, anyway.

That reminded me, I still had to send Garrus a little 'Thank you' message, one that may or may not contain several thousand illegally acquired credits, and maybe some stock in a promising eezo mining company, yeah, that was a thank you enough.

_/|

**Author's Notes: Firstly, I would like to apologize for the sheer amount of time this chapter has taken, even though not all that much happens in it. I'm very sorry, but I'm just quite terrible sometimes when it comes to time.**

**I would like to say, it hasn't entirely been my fault. After all, I do try to make an amazing piece of work every chapter for my dear readers, and that means I send it through quite a few people, because quality over quantity is my philosophy when it comes to writing.**

**I also have school work and such things as that, what with the holidays coming on I've family obligations, but due to a week vacation I shall try and get more work done. Rest assured, my devoted readers, this story shall go on.**

**I would also like to mention since so far I have not done so, and every other fanfiction author seems to; both Watch_Dogs & Mass Effect are owned by their respective company, and though I would dearly wish to, I am not included in the ownership lists.**

**As always, feel free to ask any questions/ offer any suggestions that you'd like to, I do read all of them. Happy Thanks Giving, and a Merry Christmas!**


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